As a kid, I had always seen thing about Wizard101, but never was able to play it myself due to lack of internet and other issues. However, roughly a year ago, I decided to give the game a shot, partially as a joke with my friends, and seriously delved into playing the game.
I'm currently only what you would call "mid-game" or "early mid-game," being that I've only reached Mooshu, and I've only gotten to level 47 on my main Ice Wizard, however, I feel that this has allowed me to give the game a sincere and full "attempt." Thus allowing me to at least know a bit about the game from a "new player perspective." Additionally, however, I ended watching a few "end-game" videos from different Wizard101 YouTubers showing off "end-game" PvP or PvE content, so I feel I at least know a little about what goes on towards the end of the game as well.
While playing though, I noticed a few fundamental issues I had with the game, and the one I want to focus on for this post is the "Stun Immune" mechanic.
"Stunning" in the game is apparently the culmination of several different school's takes on stopping an enemy from being able to make a move during their turn. For the Ice school this is "supposed" to be "freezing" the enemy, for the Myth school, this is simply using some magic to literally "daze" them, for Storm this is electrocuting them until their paralyzed, etc.
For starters, they all use the exact same animation of the enemy being "electrocuted" when they are stunned, which I feel loses a lot of the flavor of each school "stunning" the enemy in a different way, and I'd prefer each school to have a different animation at least, such as the Ice School's "stun" animation being more of a "freeze" where you watch the enemy get frozen alive, etc. However, this is more of a opinionated problem more than an objective one, but I thought I'd mention it at least.
The real issue is how the stun mechanic works in-game, or really, how much it doesn't work. Whenever I started playing the game, I really liked the idea of being a Ice Wizard that doesn't just cast spells that defend me, but that I'd be using the "cold" to "freeze" my enemies and stop them from attacking, so, naively I kept the basic Ice "Freeze" spell in my deck and would attempt to use it on basic street enemies during fights. This worked all well-and-good up until I fought the first boss of the game and tried to use the "Freeze" spell on it, only to have a message pop up claiming the boss was "Stun Immune."
"Stun Immunity" was effectively a giant slap to the face to anyone trying to use a "stun" spell in PvE whatsoever, as it effectively tells a player "no, you cannot stun this enemy no matter what you do, and your stun is completely useless." Now, I tried to take an optimistic approach to this, and said to myself "alright, I get it, they don't want bosses to be able to be cheated by simply spamming stun spells over and over, I'll just only use them on basic enemies." This thought process had a multitude of problems, for one, basic enemies are the ones you're really not worried about most of the time as you can usually defeat them in only a few turns using higher power cards, it's the bosses where you need the critical-thinking ability of stunning them for a turn to choose another move or allow your teammates to set themselves up for the next turn. Next, and which completely devastated the idea of ever trying to use a stun spell ever again was when I encountered my first, random street enemy that also happened to have "Stun Immunity" given to it. Being that I thought I could at least use my stun spells on basic enemies, this caused me to realize that running around hoping a basic enemy wouldn't just be completely immune to my stuns made attempting to use them completely pointless, as there would be a large chance of it literally do nothing, and even if it did something, it would only effect an enemy that could be easily dealt with, typically in a single move if you had enough pips.
To make matters worse, a lot of the Ice spells have "stuns" or more aptly "freezes" built into them. A good example is the "Winter Moon" Ice Spell, which is a 5 pip spell that deals 495 damage and stuns for 1 round (or 1 turn). This additional stun causes the spell to either cost an additional pip when in would have only costed 4 pips if the additional stun was reduced, or the spell would have costed 5 pips but would have dealt more damage, say 595 damage for example, if the additional stun wasn't there, but due to the fact that "stun for 1 round" was stapled onto the spell, this forces it to either have a higher pip cost or lose damage. Now, this would be all well and good, and honestly, I would have actually liked the idea of "freezing" the enemy, as I liked the idea of using the "cold" as I mentioned, however, being that we've already realized that stuns are completely useless in PvE, this is effectively causing the card to lose damage or cost more pips for no reason. "Yeah, but at least these work in PvP" is what you might say, and to that I say it's completely ironic that a mechanic where it forces the opponent to completely lose their turn would be fully functional in a player versus player setting, where it be fully felt by the player on the receiving end, but the mechanic has been completely reduced to uselessness in PvE mode, where most players would probably be just fine watching the robot A.I. enemy lose its next move.
Alright, so how would we fix this issue then? Honestly, I think it would be really simple; completely remove the "Stun Immune" attribute on every enemy in the game, simply delete the idea of it entirely, as the idea completely negates the use of "stunning" in the first place. Now, this of course would open up the ability of perpetually "stunning" bosses or enemies. First off, if an entire team of a 4-player group is coordinated enough to all cast their "stun" spells on a boss over and over to keep it from ever using a move, that sounds like good teamwork to me, and you must also consider that you can only have so many "stun" spells in your deck to be able to continually do that. But, there is already another simple solution to balancing this out if KingsIsle deems stunning too powerful; instead of giving a singular "stun shield" to bosses after they get stunned, bosses could receive a varying amount of stun shield depending on how seriously KingsIsle doesn't want the boss to get stunned. For example, most bosses could receive two "stun shields" after getting stunned, much like them instantly causing "stun block" after receiving their first stun. In order to stun them again, 3-out-of-4 players would have to all use a "stun spell" on the boss for it to get stunned again, and, assuming they were all using a spell that only stuns, would leave the last player to be the only one getting damage on the boss, of which the boss's allies might end up killing off the entire team if the last player is too slow to deal damage. If KingsIsle really didn't want a boss to get stunned, they could have a boss start off with a "stun block" or make it so the boss receives three "stun shields" each time they get stunned. While this would largely make "stuns" still very difficult to ever use, it wouldn't make them completely useless as with the "Stun Immune" mechanic, and at the very least, your stuns would slowly work towards eventually getting off a singular stun on a boss, which would allow stunning to feel somewhat useful at least.
Of course, with spells like "Winter Moon," however, players could simply all cast it and deal damage to the boss while also stunning it, however, the would require every player to either be Ice (or one of the schools with spells that stun and deal damage at the same time, or some other effect other than damage), and for them all to focus on the boss at the same time, of which, the boss, as mentioned before, could have allies itself that would take out the team. At a base level though, this just sounds like a well coordinated team communicating on which enemy to hit with their "stuns," and would likely be similar to a group simply casting "blade spells" on one player to allow that player to deal an absurd amount of damage to a boss to kill instantly.
Realistically, forcing "stuns" to be useless only causes players who want to use them, like myself, to have a negative experience, as being that PvE is simply everyone against the A.I., I don't think anyone would be majorly upset over someone being able to force an enemy to not attack, and honestly, some players might really enjoy that being that it would allow the fight to get over quicker.
Thus, "Stun Immunity" should be completely removed from every PvE enemy, as it simply makes "stunning" useless. Instead, every enemy should simply get a "stun shield" as they already do now, and of which is already a great mechanic to balancing out stuns on enemies, but to further ensure bosses don't get "cheated," the bosses could be allowed to produce two "stun shields" after being stunned, or they could have multiple shields before the fight starts, etc. This way, "stunning" would actually have an effect in PvE.
